News

Peter Koen chairs second European Front End of Innovation Conference

By: Heidi Bertels

The second European Front End of Innovation Conference took place in the wonderful city of Vienna, Austria (Jan 28-31, 2008). The conference was chaired by Dr. Peter Koen (Stevens Institute of Technology) and hosted in the same format as last year: a pre-conference day offering the choice between a symposium (this year focused on customer-driven innovation) or one of the workshops, two main conference days, and a half-a-day academic workshop.

 

Especially memorable were keynote speakers Clayton Christensen and Simon Woodroffe. Clayton Christensen, in an impressively skilled way of presenting, focused on how companies should develop products and business models based on "the job to be done" and interweaved this perspective with his theory on disruptiveness. Simon Woodroffe took quite another approach and provided a most entertaining and interesting presentation on the foundation and history of his company YO! The conference attendees even enjoyed him singing and dancing on stage at the end of his talk.

 

The academic workshop, aimed at bringing management practitioners and academics closer together, will not be hosted anymore next year. Despite the enthusiastic responses of attendees of this workshop, attendance was disappointing.

 

For more extensive overviews of the keynote presentations, please go to Chas Martin's website.

 

Pictures to be posted soon!

---